A beam of sunlight gilding the surface of Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, Skaneateles and Otisco Lakes, as if at the dawn of creation. The deep cobalt sheen of Skaneateles Lake, nestled in its glacial trough, moments before storm clouds spew rain that will pock the surface. Sunsets, rainbows, pink snow and village streets set in timeless stillness. This is how the Finger Lakes appear to a man attuned to light and color.

Open the page of a McCarthy book and you encounter scenes that beg to be entered. Scenes you might pass by every day and never notice, quite that way. McCarthy captures them the way we recall places in memory and dreams:luminous - bathed in light, mist, color, reflection. If there were a contemporary Finger Lakes counterpart to the Hudson River School, McCarthy would be among its artists.

His photographs record the landscapes and seasons, the gorges and vineyards,farms and festivals, the lanes and woodland cathedrals of the earth around Watkins Glen, Ithaca, Skaneateles, Naples, Canandaigua. But, they are captured in a light that casts them with a special serenity. McCarthy's wondrous and inspirational photographs can be vehicles for meditation,contemplation.

McCarthy has five photography books in print since 1984 when Oxford University Press, Toronto commissioned "The Finger Lakes", the first book in its scenic America series. Others include "The Beauty of Golf in New York State", "The Finger Lakes Revisited", "A Glimpse of Erin", a collection of photographs accompanying writing by the Irish playwright, Sean O'Casey, and "Skaneateles A Celebration of Light".

McCarthy's interest in sharing experience and memory developed as it often does, in childhood. He grew up in Syracuse's Irish neighborhood Tipperary Hill, listening to stories told on front stoops and porches, around kitchen tables, inside coffee shops and pubs. He has made his way in the world as an iron worker, newspaper publisher, pub owner and research assistant to the Mayor of Syracuse. After all that, McCarthy settled on photography as his favorite vehicle of expression, as his way of processing the world in which he lives and travels. He has photographed in Hong Kong, Macao, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, France, the coasts of Oregon and Maine. His interest in photographing golf courses have taken across New York State to our Nations' Capital District and Ireland.

But it is the Finger Lakes where McCarthy has made his home, and where he has found his greatest inspiration. From the street, from the air, from precipices, from the surface of water, McCarthy manages to see and cast the landscape, the villages and settlements of the Finger Lakes in their most elegant, regal splendor. Chance favors the prepared mind, and McCarthy is forever watching the light, waiting for sunbeams to break through the clouds, anticipating the next full moon, eager to discover and celebrate the wonder and beauty of creation.